14 July, 2017

The violent past of Leopoldo Lopez, poster boy for the Venezuelan opposition

This
week saw Leopoldo Lopez, a so-called “revolutionary” and major
figure in Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, released from prison
to house arrest due to “health concerns.” Though celebrated by
foreign media, Lopez has a history of inciting fatally violent
protests.

by
Whitney Webb

Part
2 - The Leopoldo López the press doesn’t want you to meet

López often
receives praise in the Western press as a “prisoner of conscience”
and “fiery leader.” Newsweek once glowingly wrote of his
“twinkling chocolate-colored eyes and high cheekbones,” calling
him a “revolutionary who has it all.” The Spanish newspaper El
País has even called him the Venezuelan Nelson Mandela. Many news
outlets have called him a likely future president of Venezuela.
However, López’s political history suggests that he is hardly the
man of the people and political martyr that he is made out to be.

López was
born into the upper echelon of the Venezuelan elite. A direct
descendant of the 19th-century liberator turned dictator Simón
Bolívar and Venezuela’s first president Cristóbal Mendoza,
López’s family hails from a long line of Venezuelan political
aristocracy.

He was sent
to the U.S. to complete his education in elite institutions such as
the Hun School of Princeton, a private boarding school whose alumni
include Saudi princes, as well as the children of U.S. presidents and
Fortune 500 CEOs. From there, he attended Kenyon College in Ohio and
then Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Some
journalists have asserted that López began a relationship with the
CIA while at Kenyon.

Also while
studying in the U.S., López co-founded the group Primero Justicia
(Justice First) in 1992, which later became a political party of
central importance in right-wing Venezuelan politics.

López, upon
his return to Venezuela in 1996, did not immediately jump into
politics, instead taking a lucrative job as an analyst at the
semi-privatized Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela
(PDVSA), where he worked until 1999. During this time, he and his
mother – who also worked at the company – funneled hundreds of
thousands of dollars to Primero Justicia – an illegal act under
Venezuelan corruption laws.

This
corruption scandal, however, did not come to light until years later,
when a 2007 investigation exposed the wrongdoing and barred López
from holding political office for several years.

After
leaving his job at PDVSA, López made his entry into Venezuelan
politics in 2000 and was elected mayor of Chacao, a Caracas district
known to be one of the wealthiest areas in all of Venezuela. Two
years later, López began visiting Washington, D.C. rather frequently
“to visit the IRI (International Republican Institute) headquarters
and meet with officials from the George W. Bush administration,”
according to journalist Eva Golinger.

The IRI is
one of three foundations comprising the National Endowment for
Democracy, a U.S. government-funded NGO linked to countless regime
change efforts abroad, including Egypt (2013) and Ukraine (2014). The
institute is currently chaired by U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ).

The IRI,
along with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), has also directly
funded the party López began, Primero Justicia, as well as his
current political party Voluntad Popular, which López founded in
2010.

In 2002,
while still serving as mayor, López participated directly in the
U.S.-backed coup attempt aimed at removing democratically elected
President Hugo Chávez from power. López specifically participated
in the illegal detention of then-Minister of the Interior and Justice
Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, as well as violent attacks against
Caracas’ Cuban Embassy that saw a group of protesters try to
violently enter the building. When they could not force their entry,
they cut off water and electricity to the building and smashed
windows and vehicles.

Chávez
pardoned López for his role in the coup in 2007 and López was only
barred from holding political office from 2008 to 2014 following the
revelation of his past corrupt dealings at PDVSA, as well as the
discovery of his misuse of public funds while mayor.

In the years
since, López has tried to distance himself from the 2002 coup
attempt, which remains very unpopular with Venezuelans on both sides
of the political spectrum. López’s attorneys claimed in 2014 that
“at no point was López ever a proponent of the coup, nor was he
allied with the business leaders who led it,” despite the fact that
there is video evidence showing him participating in the kidnapping
of Chacín or the fact that his own father, Leopoldo López Gil, was
a business leader who signed a decree suspending the Venezuelan
constitution that had been issued by the short-lived coup government.